ROCHESTER, MN — The weird April weather is even throwing off area hardware stores. Everybody seemed to have spring fever in the area including the stores.

Snow shovels and ice picks were replaced with lawnmowers and fertilizer. One hardware store in Rochester has cleared out their sidewalk salt for grills and coolers.

“Last year at this time we probably had warm weather for three or four weeks already,” said Arrow Ace Hardware Store Manager Matt Neumann, “We were well into spring selling the fertilizer, the rakes, the spreaders; salt wasn’t even a question.”

So the recent snow has them coming up with whatever they can to take care of the slippery sidewalks.

“We’ve been out of salt now actually after those last couple of snowfalls, I think probably a good three weeks now,” Neumann said, “The only thing that we would have would be a solar salt, which is meant for a water softener. It’s a cheap salt that you could use in an emergency.”

He said if they would have known this weather was coming they would have had some in stock.